Pakistani nuclear weapons have 8-15 kilotons: scientists

WASHINGTON, May 28 Kyodo - Devices used in Pakistan's nuclear tests were likely to be fissile bombs containing highly enriched uranium, and their explosive yields were an estimated 8 to 15 kilotons, U.S. scientists said Thursday. In a telephone interview with Kyodo News, Terry Wallace, professor at University of Arizona, said the weapons were likely to be fissile bombs -- not something like fusion or thermonuclear devices. According to a broadband seismic wave form recorded by the Incorporated Research Institute of Seismology, the explosion of the nuclear devices registered a magnitude of 4.8 on the Richter scale with an explosive yield of 8 to 15 KT, said the professor. The atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima in 1945 is believed to have yielded 15 KT. Wallace said Pakistan conducted several nuclear devices, probably simultaneously at its test site in the Chagai Hills in southwest Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. Meanwhile, Kevin O'Neill, deputy director of the Institute for Science and International Security, also said the devices used by Pakistan were not likely to be fusion weapons, like the ones rumored to have been used by India, but rather fissile ones. The explosive material used in the devises must have been highly enriched uranium, which Pakistan began producing in 1986, he said.